Today in Umlauts: "Journey into the heart of Ikea"

The country’s largest Ikea opened in Burbank, California, last month.
At 456,600 square feet, twice the size of, and one mile away from, the
old Burbank Ikea, this new store offers a lot more of everything people
have come to expect from the brand: More inspirational showrooms, more
lingonberries, more Billy bookcases. But how much is too much Ikea?

To find out, I decided to stay at the Burbank Ikea from
when the restaurant opened at 8:30 a.m. until they announced over the
speakers that the store was closing at 8:30 p.m. and we should take our
purchases to checkout. I chose a Saturday, the day the lord set aside
for furniture shopping. For a full day, I let Ikea provide for me like
the Allfather of Norse mythology, eating and drinking naught but what
Ikea provided. I wanted to see all the couch-inspired fights, document
every umlaut, and figure out how the parking attendants don't die from
smoke inhalation.

My hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, does not have an
Ikea; the closest is in another state. I've come to understand that Ikea
represents matchstick furniture "for college kids and divorced men," as
the Jonathan Coulton
song goes, but for a long time, for me, Ikea represented the far-off
luxury of Cincinnati, Ohio. I moved to Los Angeles three months ago and
discovered that Ikea was the perfect mix of affordable, well-designed,
and bedbug-free that I craved.

Since then, I have begun to fill my apartment with everything Sweden has to offer—as I write this I can see two Lack tables, a Falkhöjden desk repurposed as a dining room table, some shiny red Lixhult lockers, and a Doftranka rug. I like that I can buy a bright red coffee table, and that the founder renounced his fascist ties way back in the 1990s, before they were a renewed concern in global politics.

The pared-down Scandinavian designs of Ikea mean something to all
people. For American post-grads, it’s crappy starter furniture you
eventually discard. For people in China, it’s a place to nap and get dates. For Kanye West, it represents his entree into the world of home goods design.

But whoever you are, Ikea is known for three things:
meatballs, umlauts, and breakups. I tracked all three during my all-day
stay.

Ikea is so synonymous with relationship strife there’s an entire episode of 30 Rock
dedicated to the concept. Clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula even
uses Ikea furniture in her practice—in an interview with the Wall Street Journal,
she explained that different sections of Ikea bring up different
problems in a relationship: “In the kitchen area one person will pick up
a pan and the other will say 'You never cook anything anyway so why
would we need that?’” I’ll see if this theory holds up to my rigorous,
scientific study.

My suspicion is that Ikea causes fights through its sheer
enormity. You yell at your partner just to assert your existence in the
face of so much flat-packed furniture. There’s a scene in Sartre’s Nausea
where the protagonist realizes that every leaf on a chestnut tree is as
real as him. His mind buckles as he comprehends his insignificance
compared to all those leaves. Will looking at approximately 200,000
scented votive candles similarly tear my mind asunder?

9:33 a.m. umlauts: 0 fights: 0

Ikea before opening is like the Sochi Olympic Village today:
Giant, empty concrete structures built for a single purpose—bringing
efficient Scandinavian design to the masses and trying to convince
people to care about curling, respectively. When that purpose is not
being fulfilled, the empty building becomes like a dead language, a sign
without a signifier or signified. Ikeas are unitaskers—you wouldn’t be
able to repurpose the country’s largest Ikea as mixed-income housing any
more than you could turn a soccer field in the Amazon into a hospital.
“Big box store” doesn’t even begin to cover it. It’s the biggest and
boxiest box that you or your children, or your children’s children, will
ever see.

The only scale comparison I have for it is video games, specifically the endless maze of the Corvega Assembly Plant in Fallout 4,
where you emerge from a 200-year cryogenic sleep to find the world an
irradiated wasteland. The Corvega Assembly Plant is one of the first
locations you encounter, and it’s full of zombies, gang members, and
giant mole-rats trying to kill you.

The Burbank Ikea’s 600-seat restaurant opens half an hour
before the store proper. The Swedish American Breakfast costs $2 and
there’s free coffee. “Glamorous” by Fergie plays as I enter. Three
minutes after opening and there are almost 100 people already here. This
is easily the fewest people I will see in the Ikea restaurant all day.

I get my $2 breakfast and sit in front of giant windows
overlooking the hills of suburban Burbank—a place I’d only heard about
in Animaniacs songs and on podcasts when comedians talk about
buying their first reasonably priced home. Antsy shoppers pace in front
of the showroom floor, waiting for 10 a.m. The sausage in my Swedish
American breakfast is oddly bland. I suspect it’s the same meat as their
meatballs, in a cylinder form. I hope it is not horse meat.

10:08 a.m. umlauts: 11 fights: 0

Ikeas are laid out "the long natural way":
One is supposed to wind semi-aimlessly through the aisles. In every
store, the first section of this labyrinth consists of model rooms from
model homes, where unseen model people live model lives. Little boxes
made of ticky-tacky, etc. Each room is planned at Ikea HQ
by a designer, complete with biographies of the people who inhabit
them. Cabinets are filled with Ikea-brand pens and pencils, magazine
organizers are labeled, and closets are hung with discontinued clothes
from Target....MORE